A CONSTITUTION is not a menu from which politicians may choose only the provisions that serve the moment. Today, the inconvenient provision is the 16-vote threshold required to convict Vice President Sara Duterte. If the Senate lowers that threshold in the middle of an impeachment trial, it will not be adjusting procedure. It will be rewriting the Constitution without the Filipino people.
Article XI, Section 3(6) is categorical: “No person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two-thirds of all the Members of the Senate.”
That language leaves little room for creative counting. It does not say two-thirds of the senators present, voting, active, or willing to participate. It says two-thirds of all the Members of the Senate.
The Senate is constitutionally composed of 24 senators. Two-thirds of 24 is 16.
That number is not a technicality. It is the constitutional price of conviction. The higher threshold is meant to slow down partisan momentum, force persuasion across political lines, and ensure that removal from office rests on something more durable than anger, strategy or arithmetic.
The framers made that threshold difficult by design. Impeachment is not routine politics. It is the extraordinary power to overturn the mandate of a nationally elected official and possibly bar that official from public life. That power demands broad constitutional consensus, not a temporary majority hunting for a lower denominator.
Yet now that only 20 senator-judges are reportedly active, some would treat 20 as the magic number. Under that theory, 14 votes could convict the vice president. The Constitution would not have changed; only the political need to make conviction easier would have.
That is not interpretation in good faith. It is constitutional arithmetic driven by convenience.
That is precisely what the two-thirds requirement was written to stop. It keeps impeachment from becoming a factional weapon. If the threshold shifts with vacancies, suspensions, absences, or refusal to participate, then political actors need not win the constitutional number. They need only shrink the denominator.
Once that principle is conceded, the danger will not end with this case. A future Senate could use the same logic against a different official, from a different party, under a different political climate. What begins as a shortcut against one unpopular or inconvenient figure can become a standing weapon against any elected official who loses protection inside the chamber.
The timing only deepens the concern. The rule is being questioned during the trial of a vice president who has declared plans to seek the presidency in 2028. A constitutional command that was clear before the trial cannot acquire a new meaning just because conviction under the old one looks uncertain.
The Constitution must mean the same thing whether the respondent is Sara Duterte, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., a chief justice, or an official whom we personally dislike. Its protections matter most when political passions are strongest.
That is why constitutional rules must be defended even when doing so appears to benefit a disliked respondent. The accused does not own the rule. It belongs to the people, because it limits how far government may go when it seeks to punish, remove, or disqualify someone who obtained national office through an election.
Yes, the Senate may write trial rules for motions, evidence, subpoenas, witnesses and deliberations. But it may not smuggle a constitutional amendment into a procedural vote. It cannot erase a supermajority requirement by majority convenience or allow 10 or 11 senator-judges to dismantle a safeguard that itself requires 16 votes.
Article XVII provides the lawful methods of changing the Constitution. The Senate sitting as an impeachment court is not a constituent assembly, and its senator-judges cannot bypass those procedures by relabeling an amendment as a procedural ruling. The Filipino people must ultimately approve any constitutional change.
The distinction matters. Procedure tells the Senate how to conduct the trial. The Constitution tells the Senate what the trial may lawfully achieve. Rules of procedure may organize the courtroom; they may not redefine the verdict required to remove a constitutional officer.
If there is genuine uncertainty over the phrase “all the Members of the Senate,” the answer belongs where constitutional answers belong: the Supreme Court. The impeachment court should first rule on the threshold, and any aggrieved party may then seek review through the proper petition. What the Senate should not do is race toward judgment under a number invented for the occasion.
Judicial review would not trivialize impeachment. It would protect the boundary between judgment and lawlessness. The Senate has the solemn duty to try the case, but solemnity is not immunity. When a constitutional limit is at stake, no branch should be allowed to mark its own homework and declare the matter closed.
None of these excuses the Senate from deciding the evidence. Let the prosecution prove its case, let the defense answer, and let every senator-judge vote according to conscience, evidence and law. But the verdict must be measured against the Constitution as written. A conviction reached by changing the denominator would not strengthen accountability. It would stain it.
The Senate may judge the vice president. The Supreme Court may interpret the Constitution. Only the sovereign Filipino people may approve its amendment.
Sixteen votes cannot become 14 because 16 votes cannot be found. The Constitution is not an obstacle course for politicians to evade when its commands become inconvenient. It is the charter they swore to preserve, the limit they promised to respect, and the law the people are entitled to see obeyed.
